If You Don't Already Have a Look

Like all great garage-rock bands, the Dirtbombs have always maintained a reverence for the glories of the 7" single. Throughout their decade-plus career the Dirtbombs have used the format precisely as nature intended: Stocking their wide and sundry A-sides with all their choicest cuts while using their B-sides to stash away half-baked experiments, weird cover versions and a dazzling assortment of non-album strays.

Since the Dirtbombs have released their impressive multitudes of 7" EPs, split-singles, and compilation tracks on an unruly array of tiny labels across the globe, hunting all of them down would previously have required ample cash, shrewd timing, and fancy footwork. Thankfully, however, that changes with the release of If You Don't Already Have a Look-- a mammoth two-disc, 52-song collection that assembles all of the band's hardest-to-find rarities along with a generous selection of previously unreleased material, and eight brand new tracks.

Featuring one disc of originals and one of covers, as well as a lavish booklet of photos and liner notes, the set provides the group's established fans with an outrageous embarrassment of riches, while giving latecomers a stupefying crash course in the Dirtbombs' lo-tech, casually explosive soul-punk.

Anchored by the multi-talented Mick Collins-- formerly of primitive rock demi-legends the Gories and Blacktop-- this set's most immediately striking characteristic is its sheer consistency of quality, as there are scarcely any absolute throwaway performances lurking among these 52 tracks. (Which is astounding when you consider some of them were originally destined to become flipsides in New Zealand.)

Granted, things get awfully raw on abrasive bash-ups like "I'm Saving Myself For Nichelle Nichols" or the self-explanatory "They Hate Us In Scandinavia", but these brief (often 1 minute or less) dissonant interludes here merely serve as palate-cleansers between such irresistible originals as "The Sharpest Claws" or the mirror-ball swagger of "Here Comes That Sound Again." On these tracks Collins repeatedly proves his astonishing versatility as a vocalist-- his nonchalantly soulful pipes draw easy comparison to early Arthur Lee-- and his underrated prowess as a guitarist, particularly since he operates in a genre that puts little premium on technical ability.

As satisfying as the Dirtbombs' originals are, however, the real fun on If You Don't Already Have a Look begins when you move to the all-covers disc two. Though this set features a couple predictable choices (the Stones, Stevie Wonder, In the Red labelmates Cheater Slicks) there's also a fantastic abundance of oddball selections from such acts as Yoko Ono, Lou Rawls, ESG, and Soft Cell. On each of these covers-- whether it's on their dubbed-out remake of "Mystified" by the Romantics (!) or their genuinely heartfelt delivery of the Bee Gees' "I Started a Joke", the Dirtbombs display their uncanny talent for distilling a song down to its most primal, molten essence-- exposing unsuspected depths of bare emotion that are now fully amplified as the listener finally gets a chance to hear all of these marvels back-to-back.